Cheapest way to run three websites
February 5, 2022 8:43 PM Subscribe
I bought domains and am gathering content for three new websites, two of which will have e-commerce. I've built sites before on platforms like WordPress but never from scratch. Squarespace and Wix both require separate plans for each site. I don't have the money (or credit) to make a big investment early on. I don't need a lot of bells and whistles, but I do want to make attractive, functional sites. What's the best approach in terms of hosting fees and such?
Namecheap has hosting plans that can include more than one domain.
posted by crunchy potato at 10:25 PM on February 5, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by crunchy potato at 10:25 PM on February 5, 2022 [1 favorite]
I think the harder bit will be identifying places that can do the e-commerce part. There are lots of places to do free or very cheap general web hosting (e.g. any old-school “shared hosting” service where you upload some PHP or HTML files).
But I expect your e-commerce needs might be more specific? Like, you just need to take payment before people can download a PDF? Or you need to have an inventory of 100s of objects, each with multiple variations of colour, size, etc, along with shopping cart, offers, accounts, etc?
posted by fabius at 6:09 AM on February 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
But I expect your e-commerce needs might be more specific? Like, you just need to take payment before people can download a PDF? Or you need to have an inventory of 100s of objects, each with multiple variations of colour, size, etc, along with shopping cart, offers, accounts, etc?
posted by fabius at 6:09 AM on February 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: But I expect your e-commerce needs might be more specific? Like, you just need to take payment before people can download a PDF? Or you need to have an inventory of 100s of objects, each with multiple variations of colour, size, etc, along with shopping cart, offers, accounts, etc?
Great point. On one of the sites, I'll be selling a lot of things like that which require details, etc.
The other site w commerce involved is a lot simpler (fewer items and specifications and all printed plat) and could be handled w customers writing me what they want and me sending a Paypal invoice.
posted by mermaidcafe at 6:59 AM on February 6, 2022
Great point. On one of the sites, I'll be selling a lot of things like that which require details, etc.
The other site w commerce involved is a lot simpler (fewer items and specifications and all printed plat) and could be handled w customers writing me what they want and me sending a Paypal invoice.
posted by mermaidcafe at 6:59 AM on February 6, 2022
If you already have some experience with WordPress, you might consider using it again with the WooCommerce plugin? Very robust, lots of options, open-source & free (but you might end up paying small amounts for specialty plugins you find particularly useful). This would require setting up an account with a hosting services provider, but there's lots of them around and many of them are already well set up for handling WordPress/Woo sites - you'd have to shop around.
posted by Mary Ellen Carter at 7:33 AM on February 6, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by Mary Ellen Carter at 7:33 AM on February 6, 2022 [3 favorites]
Universe website builder might fit the bill, has commerce. they started mobile first but also have desktop site builder.
posted by wowenthusiast at 7:55 AM on February 6, 2022
posted by wowenthusiast at 7:55 AM on February 6, 2022
Depending on what you're trying to sell or how dynamic your sites need to be, I'd suggest Gumroad as a host for your e-commerce items and three static sites on netlify or similar for everything else, the only cost being the Gumroad fees when selling.
posted by simmering octagon at 1:06 PM on February 6, 2022
posted by simmering octagon at 1:06 PM on February 6, 2022
Response by poster: Gumroad has a lot of terrible reviews.
I was looking at Square, but the charges for using my domain and accepting Paypal added up.
posted by mermaidcafe at 5:40 PM on February 7, 2022
I was looking at Square, but the charges for using my domain and accepting Paypal added up.
posted by mermaidcafe at 5:40 PM on February 7, 2022
I did tech support for a large cheap shared hosting provider a while back, and the number of Wordpress sites I saw infected with malware was surprising. Most of the customers I talked to had not even considered the security aspects of running their own website ("It's supposed to be easy!!") and were quite shocked to find their little league team's site redirecting to ads for shady pharmaceuticals and porn.
Wordpress is widely used, and so there's a lot of incentive to find security holes. Many attacks are from automated botnets or another machine within the shared hosting provider. Some "free themes" you find on the internet already have malware baked in. I would not personally run anything like WooCommerce that takes credit cards or requires storing personally identifying information on shared hosting in general. If you do decide to run wordpress, you should be prepared to spend time keeping it updated and fixing the occasional snafu when one of those updates breaks your site. Most of the time, helpful support is hard to find and you will be expected to do your own research if there's an error.
On the positive side, there are a LOT of themes and plugins out there! It's very versatile. Wordpress can also be used as a "static" site and be fairly secure as long as you lock down the admin page and comments.
If the sites you want to build are simple, I'd agree with others above that a static HTML site instead will be much less of a hassle and require very little upkeep. You could then have links to gumroad/etsy or a paypal button for the transaction/storefront and let somebody else's IT team wrestle the hackers.
Sorry to not have more positive solutions, and I'm sure some people run WP/woocommerce without any issue - folks do not call support when things are going fine after all! I just wanted to mention these additional maintenance costs in time and stress in case they might factor into your decision.
posted by Feyala at 6:31 PM on February 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
Wordpress is widely used, and so there's a lot of incentive to find security holes. Many attacks are from automated botnets or another machine within the shared hosting provider. Some "free themes" you find on the internet already have malware baked in. I would not personally run anything like WooCommerce that takes credit cards or requires storing personally identifying information on shared hosting in general. If you do decide to run wordpress, you should be prepared to spend time keeping it updated and fixing the occasional snafu when one of those updates breaks your site. Most of the time, helpful support is hard to find and you will be expected to do your own research if there's an error.
On the positive side, there are a LOT of themes and plugins out there! It's very versatile. Wordpress can also be used as a "static" site and be fairly secure as long as you lock down the admin page and comments.
If the sites you want to build are simple, I'd agree with others above that a static HTML site instead will be much less of a hassle and require very little upkeep. You could then have links to gumroad/etsy or a paypal button for the transaction/storefront and let somebody else's IT team wrestle the hackers.
Sorry to not have more positive solutions, and I'm sure some people run WP/woocommerce without any issue - folks do not call support when things are going fine after all! I just wanted to mention these additional maintenance costs in time and stress in case they might factor into your decision.
posted by Feyala at 6:31 PM on February 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
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See nice websites built on webflow: https://webflow.com/websites/popular (some sites you can just clone)
Other places for free hosting: https://free-for.dev/#/?id=web-hosting
posted by querty at 9:58 PM on February 5, 2022 [2 favorites]